My Father's Notebook: A Novel - Hardcover

Abdolah, Kader

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060598719 ISBN 13: 9780060598716

Publisher: Harper, 2006

Synopsis

Aga Akbar, the youngest of seven children and the illegitimate son of a Persian nobleman, is a deaf-mute. He makes use of a rudimentary sign language to get by in the world, but his deepest thoughts and feelings go unexpressed. Hoping to free the boy from his emotional confinement, his uncle asks him to visit a cave on nearby Saffron Mountain and to copy a three-thousand-year-old cuneiform inscription -- an order of the first king of Persia and the destination of many pilgrimages. Through the rest of his life, Aga Akbar uses these cuneiform characters to fill his notebook with writings only he can understand.

Years later, his political-dissident son, Ishmael, has been forced to flee Iran. From his new home in the Netherlands, he attempts to translate the notebook, and in the process he tells his father's story, his own story, and the story of twentieth-century Iran -- from the building of the first railroad to the struggles for power among the shah, the communists, and the mullahs, and ending with the revolution.

Rich in the myths of Persia and peopled with characters of rare archetypal power, this stunning and ambitious novel by Kader Abdolah masterfully charts a culture's troubled voyage into modernity. Just as poignantly, it is a magnificent, timeless tale of a son's love for his father.

About this title

About the Author

Kader Abdolah is a pen name created to honor friends who died under the oppressive Iranian regime. The author of three novels, two short story collections, and numerous works of nonfiction, Abdolah joined a secret leftist organization while a student in Teheran. In 1988, at the invitation of the United Nations, he came to the Netherlands as a political refugee.

From Publishers Weekly

The history of Iran in the 20th century glints through the fractured lens of the enigmatic notebook of the deaf-mute carpet mender Aga Akbar in this deeply felt tale. Born to the concubine of a Persian nobleman, Aga Akbar invents a cuneiform language inspired by that of an ancient Persian king in an effort to express himself. Aga Akbar marries the brave but bitter Tina, fathers four children and moves from tiny Saffron Village to the big city. There he finds his carpet-mender's craft replaced by mechanized drudgery, and participates in the religious fervor preceding the revolution led by the imams. Years later, Aga Akbar's son, Ishmael, who narrates most of the novel, partially translates the notebook his father filled with his cuneiform script. Ishmael, who like the author is a political exile in the Netherlands, tries to understand his father, whom he served as translator and guide almost from the day he was born. Though Ishmael feels like an extension of his father, his leftist politics and university education inevitably separate them, emotionally and physically. The narrative is sometimes choppy and overpacked, but Ishmael's complex love for his father and his country and his struggle to do what is right for both proves moving and illuminating
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About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060598719
• ISBN 13: 9780060598716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336